Stroud's Slave Laws had extensive influence upon national legal thinking on the issue of slavery. In a blanket survey of slave codes of the period, he analyzed the statutes of twelve slaveholding states. Stroud's book exposed to the world, through its publications in 1827 and 1856, the diabolical nature of legal enactments throughout the South that debased both African people and those who held them in bondage.

Beecher Stowe received a fair amount of criticism about her so-called "misrepresentation" of slavery with her publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852. She published this volume the following year, in which she sought to prove the veracity of her portrayal of the institution by laying out her source materials, including eyewitness accounts. As with the novel, Beecher Stowe received tremendous support from many Northerners and abolitionists for this publication and drew heavy criticism from advocates of slavery, especially in the Southern states